New reliable methodologies for distinguishing virgin and recycled cashmere fibers

Cashmere plays an important role in luxury factory due to its characteristic. Since many companies start to produce and market recycled cashmere textiles, objective and quantitative methods to identify and possibly quantify recycled cashmere are crucial in particular to discourage the adulteration. Available analytical methods for the identification of recycled and virgin fibers are currently confined to subjective assays. For this reason, two different techniques have been studied for having an objective, fast and reliable analysis for fiber discrimination. The first approach involves the use of the NIR spectroscopy coupled with chemometric assessment. The second approach is based on dye adsorption investigated with UV-vis. Finally, both techniques were applied to blends of different proportions of virgin and recycled fibers to evaluate the detection limits.